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Don’t worry about it. Unless, of course, you have to.”
A friend of mine told me that about a year ago, and I’ve been living my life by that creed since. It sums up every relationship you and I have ever had with a girl. When I get together with friends, we talk about girls almost exclusively. Some sports talk will get sprinkled in there. Maybe a comment or two about the state of the nation. Some light ribbing about that abortion of a t-shirt your buddy is wearing. But it always comes back to women. The ones we’ve slept with, the ones we want to sleep with, and the ones that got away.
I can’t tell you for certain, but in my mind the bulk of any conversation going on between two women usually revolves around who they’re dating, who they’re hooking up with, and who they want to hook up with. Am I wrong on this? Maybe I’m just stupid. Maybe when girls get together they talk politics, but until a girl tells me different I’m assuming all they do is talk about guys. Well, that and giving each other faux compliments on one another’s figures and clothing choices. It’s a hunch, but hear me out. When a group of two or more women convene somewhere (whether it’s in a coffee shop, a group chat, or that oyster restaurant that doesn’t serve drinks under twelve dollars a pop) there is one phrase that is regurgitated verbatim:
“Are you guys talking?”
It’s ambiguous and transparent at the same time. It represents a woman perfectly. Confusing, mysterious, vague. Women confuse me. Shocker, I know. It’s a phrase pretty much exclusively used during a girls lunch. A pow-wow where friends of the female variety catch up on one another’s personal lives. It’s code. But what does that mean?
“Are you talking?”
It’s fun to say isn’t it?
I’ll tell you what it means- “are you guys talking?” means you’re fucking someone and now considering a dive into becoming exclusive. But it’s never as easy as just saying that she wants to be in a relationship. She weighs the pros and cons heavily in her head. So how does she convey this to her friend?
“I mean, yeah. We’re talking. But he’s annoying me right now and I don’t know why.”
She’ll say this as she sips her glass of Rosé and the girl (s) sitting adjacent her person will nod and silently compare their love lives to what they’ve just heard. Are you confused yet? Good, because so am I.
“Talking” to a girl is a high wire balancing act. The male, the pursuer, is a mushroom. It’s fed bullshit and kept in the dark by the woman, who holds all of the trump cards. On any given day you can be option number one or option number twenty. It’s about feel, but what do you do when you don’t have feel? I sure as hell don’t have it. I’ve got the intuition of a seven-year-old. If something feels right, then it must be right, right? Wrong. So, so wrong.
You won’t know where you stand with a girl until you know. She’ll let you know, but to assume that you’re in is a fools errand. It sucks, but you have to accept it. Following generalized dating rules are stupid, but people follow them because that shit works. She wants you to text her, but not too much. She wants to hang out with you, but she also wants you to leave her the fuck alone.
If that seems confusing it’s because it is confusing. I can only speak from personal experience, but what I do know is that girls are unsure of what they want. I know that isn’t groundbreaking news, and I know that I’m not Mel Gibson in “What Women Want.” I’ve dated girls before and they’ve told me as much. In the past, girls I’ve hooked up with or dated will confide certain things to me after a grace period. She’ll tell me that during conversations with friends I’m annoying her, but three hours later she’s lying in bed with me laughing.
I know this probably reads as a jumbled mess. A halfway coherent thought about the state of women in 2016. But dating is jumbled mess. I try my best to not be annoying. I don’t wait three days after getting a girl’s number to ask her out. Maybe I should stop asking so-and-so to hang out so much. But I’m not going to do any of these things. I’m not worried about it right now. I’ll worry about if I have to, but for now I don’t have to do a damn thing except see if she’s still up for grabbing a bite later. What I’m really trying to tell you is this: Don’t worry about it. Unless, of course, you have to. .
Respond
jduda@grandex.co
I think my being able to understand girls is a curse. Instead of enjoying wistful optimism, I am intuitive enough to know that none of them want me.
When I read the title I was ready to get all fired up and prove you wrong, but I have nothing of the sort to say. I confuse myself dating. Guys are pretty clear. Either they want you or they don’t. If they drop everything for us, we know they like us. If they’re vague and difficult to get a hold of, we know they don’t. But as women, I think we all play games even if we try not to. We don’t want to appear too interested or not interested enough, we want to be carefree but also want to have that tiny bit of power so we’re not disrespected, we want to seem confident and not needy, but we’re still human and have insecurities… But I mean, I can’t seem to hold onto a guy for more than a few months so what do I really know?
Yeah, I didn’t understand any of that.
I don’t think we’re much better about playing games. Although to be honest, I think that’s because of women. Sometimes I want to bust out some 7th-grade-esque enthusiasm about a girl, but (in my experience) that backfires roughly 100% of the time. But like you say, maybe I’m not the best person to ask.
But if you are too direct, guys think you’re a) crazy or b) clingy. Hence the games. Might as well just act like I don’t care and hope some guy who’s slightly more unsure than I am but willing to give a good effort approaches me and gives me a good reason to let my guard down.
When you act like you don’t care, we stop texting you. You’re better off being at least somewhat direct. If the guy flakes because you were direct, he’s probably an ass.
True i’m all for when a woman is direct both in saying shes interested or saying shes not. There;s nothing wrong with being “hey i think youre cute” “hey i find you interesting” etc level of direct. the level of direct that freaks guys out is “i’ve weighed in my mind and found you be a good choice for marriage and fathering our children” level stuff.
I’m usually direct by default so I try to hold back. But this is good to know.
Not to be too preachy, but that’s only for guys that aren’t actually ready to settle down at all. Every guy has that friend. That friend is getting laid a lot, then is terrified when the girl likes him. That guy is usually also a shithead.
It’s 2016, go out there, be direct. As my dad always said, “The answer is always no if you don’t ask, and even if it is…well you’re in the same place you are right now.”
Sup?
Be extremely ambiguous yourself. Two can play this game. Keep stoic and reserved and express very little telling emotions. Don’t be a boring piece of shit but don’t make decisions out of pure emotion either. Be practical, tactical, and logical. Gather information, store it, learn from it, and use it against them if need be later. Don’t show too much interest but give them enough attention so they appreciate you. Only revel in truth and facts. Seem aloof at times but also extremely focused at the same time to give off the appearance that you are trying to solve the world’s problems in your head. Just be nice to them and let go of envy and bullshit games and you’ll be ahead of the pack and possibly her. Light piles of cash on fire and melt jewelry so that they get to witness their world illusions being destroyed in front of them. People are a depreciating asset so thing of relationships like a business investor.
All relationships end in divorce or death
Life is a one way dead end street, time is a man made construct, reality is an illusion, ignorance is strength, freedom is slavery, natural grown plants are illegal, chemically synthesized drugs that kill hundreds of thousands are readily available from smiling faces on the TV, electricity and energy is freely emitted yet we pay for it. Lies are truth and truth will get you killed.
Life is hard. No one gets out alive.
That’s one helluva truth bomb you just dropped on the people.
Stopped trying to understand them years ago.
Women are meant to be loved, not understood.
Thanks to the article from Improper Bostonian about reading more, I’ve started reading “Modern Romance” by Aziz Ansari. The entire book basically just throws stats at you to show how different dating is for us than it was for generations before us. A large bulk of the first half of the book (I’m only halfway done) is about how we just play games with each other. The situations of “I’ll text you back 26 minutes after you texted me because you waited 19 minutes to respond to my previous text” is so incredibly stupid, y’all. I obviously do this and play the game because like NurseJackie said, girls can’t appear crazy or clingy in any situation. If we all just dropped this bullshit about playing games and not wanting to appear too needy/clingy and just be like, “Hey, I like you. Let’s go out”, the world would be much less confusing….easier said than done though.
Dude, I never really comment. But this made my day lol have been struggling with girls in the past few weeks and this came like rain on summer! Thanks for writing such an helpful “jumbled mess” haha
You really don’t think much of women, do you? You think all that exists in our little tiny female brains is discussions of you and your fellow males? Yes, we occasionally talk about men, but trust me, you’re not that interesting and we’re (mostly) not that shallow. Maybe women aren’t discussing sports, hobbies, politics, work, etc with you because you they can tell you don’t respect them and you aren’t socially aware enough to handle an intelligent woman.
Take so hot needs oven mitts. That bit about the mushroom though, spot on.
He must have watched The Departed recently.
I’m almost to the point of envying gay dudes who don’t have to put up with this shit
They put up with other kinds of shit
Ba-Dum-Tiss